


You Have Kids?

by Spnfandom8



Category: White Collar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:48:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26916118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spnfandom8/pseuds/Spnfandom8
Summary: Neal Caffrey has been keeping a secret from his team. A big secret. How will his team react when they find out what Neal has been keeping from them?
Kudos: 26





	You Have Kids?

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy. :)

I let out a deep sigh as I finally sat down at my desk, I had gotten to work 2 hours early because Peter thought that there was a lead to the case we were currently working, It’s now three in the afternoon and this is the first time i’ll be sitting down since I woke up this morning.   
I lean back in my seat and tip my hat over my face, waiting for Jones to come back with the lunch he promised us.   
A few minutes later finds me rolling forwards in my chair as I hear footsteps coming to a stop in front of my desk, a look in that direction tells me that Peter is standing in front of my desk, a confused expression on his face.   
“Come on Neal, Jones has our lunch up in the conference room, he also apparently picked up a few stray kids on the way back” he tells me, all I can think of is the food though, and I quickly stand, my stomach rumbling loudly at the prospect of eating today.   
“Yes, food!” I cheer as I trail Peter up the stairs to the conference room.   
“Wait, kids?” I question, wondering where Jones would have found children.   
“Yeah, I guess we’ll figure out what the hell that means when we get up there” he tells me, obviously as focused on the food as I am.   
“Hey Jones, Diana” I greet distractedly as I beeline for the food, i’ve lost my appetite a moment later when I hear dual cries of “Daddy!” from the corner where Jones and Diana were crouched a moment ago.   
“Shit! Kory? Damian?” I ask as I rush over towards them, falling to my knees to embrace them as they run towards me as well, hugging me like they hadn’t seen me in years, even though I made them breakfast this morning.   
“Are you guys okay? Where’s Christie? How did you get here?” I fire out one after the other, not really giving them a chance to answer my questions.   
“We’re fine dad, stupid Ms. Christie is at the park and we walked here” Kory answers me, the snark coming out in full force.   
“Dad?” I hear Peter question incredulously from behind me, but my kids are more important, so I hold up a finger behind my back, letting him know i’ll explain later.   
“You walked here? Do you know how dangerous that is Kory, you guys are little kids, anyone could have taken you! How many times have I told you that you need to stay with Ms. Christie when your out!” I rant, knowing that the main reason for my yelling is that they scared the shit out of me when they showed up here with Jones, in that second I didn’t know what might have happened to them.   
I watch with guilt flaring across my face as Damian’s eyes start watering, his lower lip trembling, and Kory notices it too.   
“No! Please don’t cry Dami” she says as she reaches over to her twin and holds his hand, like she’s done over and over when he’s upset.   
“I’m sorry I yelled Damian, I was just worried about you guys” I explain as I once again tug my children towards me, holding them tight and waiting to see if Damian would break out in tears.   
I cringe when a moment later he flings his arms around my neck and his small body starts shuddering with silent sobs, his face buried into the side of my neck and his tears trailing down my neck and into my shirt.   
A moment later I put my arm under his butt and he lifts his legs around my waist, clinging to me like a little monkey, I stand up with him in my arms and start swaying back and forth, dropping my free hand to my side when I feel Kory gripping my pants leg, holding her hand and letting her squeeze that instead.   
Knowing that it might take Damian a while to calm down, I decide to get answers out of my sassy daughter instead.   
“Kory, why aren’t you and Damian with Ms. Christie at the park?” I ask, knowing that they were supposed to be there, considering it’s a wednesday afternoon, she always takes them to the park on wednesdays.   
“Because, Ms. Christie had her friends over today at the park and one of her friends kids pushed Dami and he scraped his knee, I went and told Ms. Christie but then the other kid told his Nanny that Damian pushed him, and she told Ms. Christie that her kid wouldn’t push Damian and she believed her! And then she put Dami and me into timeout, but we didn’t even do anything, he’s the one who hurt Damian” she tells me, with all of the details, which i’ve found children tend to do.   
“Okay, i’ll talk to Ms. Christie about that, but how did you end up here, with Jones and Diana?” I ask, chancing a look at the trio clustered in front of me, staring at me with fading shock and wonder on their faces.   
“I told Ms. Christie that me and Damian had to go to the bathroom, and then we snuck out the windows and met up at the back of the bathrooms, then I remembered that you said you worked at the FBI building so I looked up the address, and then I used the GPS and me and Damian walked here. We missed you” she tells me, looking up at me with guilt and regret in her eyes.   
“We didn’t mean to make you worry daddy” she tells me   
“Okay, one last question, how did you get up here with Jones?” I ask   
“He saw us waiting outside and he asked us where our parents were, I told him that our dad was upstairs in the White Collar unit, cause’ that’s where you told us you worked now, and he said that he worked their too, and we asked if he could bring us up to him because he didn’t know we were there and we were supposed to be with our mom, and he said yes, and then he brought us here” she explains   
I just nod, feeling my expression lose some of the stress and soften, feeling her grip on my hand relax as she realises that i’m not mad at her anymore.   
I stop swaying a moment later when the tears stop flowing from Damians eyes, and he’s only quietly sniffling now.   
I lean back down and set his feet on the floor so that he’s standing next to his sister, who quickly reaches out for his hand.   
“Listen guys, I need you to understand something, you absolutely can not ever do something like this again” I tell them sternly “I know that Ms. Christie wasn’t listening to you, but you put yourselves in danger by walking all the way here from the park, I don’t ever want you guys to sneak away from her again. I gave you two that phone for a reason, if you need me, you call, I will always come. Now, on the other hand, i’m proud of your team work and the fact that you successfully made it to your destination safely and without incident, and while I don’t approve of your sneaking away from Ms. Christie, the bathroom trick was a very good idea, and one i’ll be talking to your uncle Moz about later” I tell them with a chuckle, watching their faces lighten as the disappointment fades off of mine.   
“I love you guys, please don’t scare me like that again” I tell them with another quick hug.   
When i’m finally done reassuring myself that the most precious things in my life are alright, I turn around to look at my team, realising that they never looked away from me and my kids once during our interaction.   
“It seems I have some explaining to do” I say as I take in the slightly betrayed looks of the people around me.   
I hold up my finger as I spin around, deciding to situate my kids on the couch at the far end of the room instead of having them bored out of their minds waiting on me.   
I quickly take their hands and lead them to the couch, pulling the phone out Kory’s pocket I unlock the parental controls on netflix and put on their favorite show, handing the phone back to Kory a moment later, I drop a kiss on each of their foreheads and them walk back to my team, a resigned look on my face.   
I sit down at the far end of the table, waiting as they all do the same, stalling for a moment I grab a plate and some food before I begin.   
“I know that you guys are probably a little shocked at this um, secret of mine, but I promise that it’s for a good reason. When I was a teenager, I got my girlfriend pregnant, we were both living on the streets, but she decided that she didn’t want to terminate the pregnancy, and I told her that I would support her decision, whatever it was she wanted to do. So, uh, 9 months later, Stephanie went into labor, I called a cab and rushed her to the hospital, she was in labor for 22 hours, and then we finally had our kids, one boy and one girl, fraternal twins, we already had names picked out, and she was holding them in her arms, when suddenly she went slack, I scooped our babies up before they fell as doctors and nurses rushed in past me. I was pushed out into the hall with our children and about 30 minutes later the doctors came out and told me that she had died from ‘unseen complications of birth.’  
At that point I had been stealing to support Stephanie and our unborn children, and neither of us had any family to support us, so after that, I stayed with the babies in the hospital until it was time for them to come home, which back then was a shitty rundown apartment that me and Steph had saved for for months, we had cleaned it up and we had made a nursery, everything was ready for our children to come into this world, neither of us had realised though, that Steph wasn’t going to be there for it.  
Um, it was hard, I didn’t have many friends at that point, and there was bottle feeding, and diaper changing, and alternating screaming babies at all hours of the night. The best way I had to support the three of us was stealing, so when they were a couple months old, I had run out of the money that I had saved from previous cons, and I needed more money, so I put my kids in their stroller and I walked to the park, brainstorming new, low risk, ways to get money that wouldn’t put my children at risk of going into the system, I knew how shitty it could be from my childhood.  
Anyway, that was the day that I met Mozzie, he saw my skill and talent for what it was, and he also saw me struggling to raise two babies by myself, until they were uh, 2 years old, he made sure to give me the lowest risk, highest gain jobs he could find, and the kids took to calling him uncle Mozzie. It wasn’t the most lucrative of jobs, and we were barely scraping by paycheck to paycheck.   
That was when he realised that I needed bigger jobs to continue supporting them, and he got them for me. That’s what put me on your radar, I started pulling bigger cons for more money, that’s when I started travelling to throw you off my trail, and that’s when I hired Ms. Christie, she is the kids Nanny, she took care of them while I was gone, and I made sure to facetime them every night, and I visited at least once a week, always making sure you still thought I was in whatever country.   
I told them I was away on business while you were chasing me that last year, and I only got to visit them a handful of times, and then when I was in prison I told them that I just had to go away for a while, and there was this guy who had a cellphone hidden from the guards, he would let me use it to call my kids every night in exchange for a shit ton of cigarettes.   
When Mozzie and I first met up, he helped me create the Neal Caffrey identity, and Neal Caffrey doesn’t have kids, because that would have put them in danger in my line of work. That’s why you never knew they existed, they live in an apartment with Ms. Christie inside my radius, and I know you don’t check my tracking data all that much because then you would know that I spend 99 percent of my free time at that apartment with my kids, I spend most nights there and I always make them breakfast before I have to rush back to my ‘apartment’ so that you can pick me up for work.   
My kids are my life, they are why I pulled the jobs that I pulled, they are the motivation for me to be as good at what I do as I am, because I needed to come home to them.” I finish, realising that I had finished my lunch while I was retelling the story of my life.   
As I wait for my team to process, I look across the room at my smiling children, Kory, takes after me the most in the looks department, she has long black hair and my piercing blue eyes, my smile and my nose, my wit and sense of humor, pair that with her sweet voice and silver tongue, and you have a mini Neal Caffrey in the makings. Damian on the other hand takes after his mother, his light blond hair and chocolate brown eyes, the natural tan and her sweet disposition, always the first one to jump to help any injured being, the one who was most sensitive to the emotions around him, always ready to bring out that genuine sweet little smile for anyone who was looking down, my peacemaker.   
I’m startled out of my musings when I hear Peter clear his throat, I quickly snap my head in his direction, waiting to see what my team is going to think of my extended deception.   
“I was angry Neal, angry that you kept this from us, but now that you’ve told us your side of things, it seems to me like your just an overprotective dad” Peter tells me with a smile.   
“You better watch out for that one Caffrey, she’s a mini you in the making” Jones tells me with a nod to Kory.   
“I know, don’t worry, she won’t be on your radar if I can help it, don’t need to be making this into the family business” I tell him with a relieved chuckle, happy that it seems like they realised how important it was for me to keep my kids a secret from them.   
“I hope you realise how annoyed Elizabeth is going to be with you that you kept 2 adorable little mini Caffreys from her for so long” Diana tells me.   
“You think she’ll forgive me if I let her babysit?” I ask   
“I don’t know Neal, we have been deprived of this side of you for a long time, not to mention the adorable children that we have been missing out on spoiling” Peter tells me.   
“Don’t you dare spoil them Peter, I don’t need Kory getting any more of an attitude than she already has” I tell him.   
“That sweet little face? An attitude? I don’t think so” Jones says   
“Why don’t you try and tell her that she can only watch 2 hours of tv a day, see how sweet they are then” I tell them, recalling the fit she threw yesterday because I kicked her off the tv and told her to go play with Damian.   
“I never would have guessed it had I not seen you with them today, but you seem like a really good dad Neal” Peter tells me softly after Jones and Diana walk over to the kids to see if they want any food.   
“Thank you Peter, I try, I really do, sometimes it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be enough, but they are great kids, and I love them” I tell him, feeling the weight lift off my chest as I finally brought my two families together, even though it was an accident.

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts? good? bad? meh? lemme know what you think. :)


End file.
